


Movie, States-side, Saturday

by Gray Shadows (the_afterlight)



Category: Young Wizards - Diane Duane
Genre: F/M, M/M, OT3, Oblivious Kit, Polyamory, Relationship Advice, Relationship Negotiation, Tea
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-01
Updated: 2013-07-01
Packaged: 2017-12-16 17:40:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/864792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_afterlight/pseuds/Gray%20Shadows
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>The problem, Nita explains, her sandwich gone to crumbs with the sharp bite of fresh onion still stinging her tongue, is that she's not actually upset about it. And isn't even really sure if she should be.</em>
</p>
<p>In which Kit is oblivious, Nita is accidentally observant, and Ronan doesn't want the middle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Movie, States-side, Saturday

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Colourofsaying](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Colourofsaying/gifts).



When a soft >whumpf< sounded outside, Annie put down her pen, closed the binder of the farm's accounts, and moved towards the kitchen to put the kettle on for tea. She was slicing bread for sandwiches when the door opened and Nita stepped through, a little breathless but quickly recovering. "You minded the overlays?" Annie asked, in lieu of a welcome; she grabbed a second knife, handed it to Nita handle first, and pointed at a block of cheese. 

"Yeah, of course. I-- don't want a repeat of what happened last time." Nita concentrated on getting the cheese sliced as evenly as she could manage; Annie wondered what her niece was ignoring that had her concentrating so hard on something else. "Kit hasn't let me live it down, and Ronan hasn't been much better. Onion, too?" she asked; her hand was already halfway up to the basket hanging above the counter.

Annie nodded, and Nita grabbed one and began slicing. "There's a bit of nice ham left from dinner yesterday," she explained. "It should do for sandwiches. And then you can tell me why you popped over, ta? You're not usually popping over just to see _me_ , after all. Not that I mind the company."

Nita flushed a little. "Uh, sorry. I don't mean to be-"

"It's okay, Nita," Annie assured her, smiling softly. "I remember being seventeen. I never had much time for my aunts, either. Antonia was the worst for it, though, always dashing about -- she'd be your... third cousin once removed, if I remember correctly, although we never paid too much attention to the specific degree. We're named for the same great-grandmother, not that either of us ever met the woman."

"Oh? I don't think Dad's ever mentioned a cousin Antonia," Nita said, her tone a little leading. "Maybe once? There was an Antonia Callahan mentioned in a precis I was reading..."

Annie nodded, taking the cutting board from Nita and using it to slice the ham. "I don't doubt that he's forgotten her; I'm honestly not sure they ever spoke. Yes, Antonia's a wizard, and we ended up together on errantry a time or two. We don't speak all that often anymore, once or twice a year, but the Manual does make it a little easier to keep in touch. Besides, we Callahans have a history of getting the... more difficult jobs, long before you and your sister came along. Having a few extra friends to call on never hurts -- as you well know." 

Nita laughed a bit, grabbing some bread and slathering it with butter. "Do yours come from other planets, too?" she asked, grinning at her aunt, as she layered the ham, cheese, and onion together on her sandwich. After a moment's thought, she added an extra slice of ham. 

"Not anymore, but for about a year and a half I was in almost constant communication with a wizard from Rihann. Powers, I haven't spoken to Ela in... it must be two decades, at least. I can't have been more than twenty, maybe not even your age. But you're not here to listen to me ramble about the old days," Annie insisted, grabbing the kettle from the stove and fixing two cups of tea. "Come on through and we'll sit and chat, and you can tell me what it is I can help you with."

* * *

_The problem, Nita explains, her sandwich gone to crumbs with the sharp bite of fresh onion still stinging her tongue, is that she's not actually upset about it. And isn't even really sure if she should be._

"So did you want to catch a movie this weekend?" Kit asked. He was laying across the end of Nita's bed, idly tossing a tennis ball in the air. Nita was just waiting for him to miss a catch and smack himself on the nose. "Iron Man 3's still playing, and we never did get to see the end."

Nita shrugged. "Maybe." She was sitting at her desk; in theory, she was working on homework, but she'd caught herself reading the same page over and over again, barely noticing the words. It was just that kind of lazy day. "Uh, if nothing comes up, yeah." They'd both been pretty active recently, ending up on a number of small errantries; Nita had resigned herself to dropping everything at a moment's notice to go and patch another set of potholes -- and do damage control if there was anyone around to see the alien ships that made them. "Saturday?"

Kit shook his head, still managing to catch the ball as it came down. "Can't. Ronan's coming over to work on that project he was talking about. The thing with the overlays? I promised him Saturday. What about Sunday?"

"Sunday'll work, yeah. We can check the times later." Nita spun in her chair, grinning at Kit as he passed through her vision. "You know, with the amount of time you guys are spending together, I'm beginning to wonder which of us you're actually dating." When Kit didn't immediately respond to her teasing, Nita stopped the spinning chair, facing him. "... That was a joke, Kit."

"Uh, yeah." Kit had blanched a little bit, the ball caught and held just above his face, held steady like he'd forgotten it was there. "Sorry, I guess I didn't realise how much time I was spending with Ronan. The project's almost done, he said, so there won't be much need for him to come over."

"That's not what I meant!" Nita insisted. "Seriously, I was just teasing. I know you'd tell me if there was something going on." She hesitated for a moment, spinning her chair back towards her desk. "Right?"

Kit sat up; the ball fell from his hand and dropped to the floor, rolling out the open door. "Yeah,  
uh, except... I don't think I realised what _was_ going on until just now. Um. I think I might have been kinda flirting with him? A lot? Without realising it. I don't know, I wasn't doing it on purpose..."

"Are you saying," Nita began, "that you _accidentally fell_ for one of our best friends and _didn't notice_?" Without spinning the chair, Nita looked over her shoulder at her boyfriend. "Christopher Rodriguez, are you _entirely serious_?"

"Like that's the stupidest thing I've ever done," Kit retorted, but his attempt at a smile was fairly poor. "Nita, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to-"

Nita got up out of the chair and sat down beside Kit on the bed. "It's okay," she said, slinging an arm around his shoulders. "Let's go to that movie on Sunday. You... talk to Ronan on Saturday. We can see what happens from there, right?"

Kit's smile grew a little more genuine. "What did I do to deserve you?" he asked.

"I dunno," Nita told him. "Picked up a book in a used bookstore, apparently."

* * *

"Well," Annie said, placing her teacup on the nearest uncovered part of the table -- given her usual filing methods, that was a little difficult to find amidst the papers -- and folding her hands in her lap. "It's now Tuesday. I trust from your confusion that... Kit and Ronan have come to an understanding of their own?"

Nita nodded. "Apparently Ronan's been interested in Kit for a while, but didn't want to make a move while Kit and I were dating," she explained. "Which... They're both interested in each other, but Kit and I still like each other, too. Shouldn't I be upset about this or something?"

Annie gave an odd little smile. "I don't put much stock in 'shoulds' when it comes to relationships. There are enough ways of doing them on Earth alone... And you and I both know the myriad ways people do things across this galaxy alone."

"Are you suggesting that the three of us should... work something out?" Nita asked.

"I'm suggesting that you three need to talk to each other." Annie picked up her tea and took another sip. "I'll give Ronan a call, but I believe he's at home tonight; you'd know Kit's schedule better than I, but you might just ask him to pop over here and join the two of you?"

Nita practically leapt over, throwing her arms around her aunt. "Thanks, Aunt Annie," she said. "For listening. Don't bother calling Ronan, I'll just head over and see if he's around; he's got a good spot cleared for transits now, after all his jumping back and forth."

Annie hugged Nita close, pressing a kiss into the crown of her head. "Don't be a stranger. Any time you want to chat, just let me know."

"I will," Nita said. She took her plate and cup back into the kitchen on the way out the door, leaving Annie to her paperwork. A few moments later, the familiar pop of a transit spell announced her departure.

* * *

The scene, when Ronan opened the front door to Nita's knock and stared at her for a long moment, was close enough to her memory that Nita couldn't help but grin and say, "I'm on errantry, and I greet you."

"Come over to beat me about for stealing your boyfriend?" Ronan asked her, but he pulled the door open the rest of the way, stepping aside to let her in. His expression was sheepish, but he led her into the kitchen. "Tea?"

"Got any Coke?" Nita asked. "Just had tea at Annie's, and I can't drink it like you guys. Not anymore. One summer of tea was enough."

Ronan pulled two cans out of the fridge, handing one to Nita before popping the other open for himself. "Does Kit know you came over?" he asked. 

Nita shook her head. "Not yet, anyway," she explained, "but I think we should call him to come over. I thought... maybe the three of us ought to talk about things here."

"What's there to talk about? I don't want to step on any toes here, Nita. I told Kit -- if you guys break up, which I _don't want to happen_ , because you are one of those sickening, together-since-high-school couples that we all secretly envy, then yeah, I'm interested, but I don't want to get between you."

Nita has a sudden mental flash of exactly that -- Ronan between her and Kit -- and realises that maybe her idea will work out after all, if the heat she felt in response was indicative of her reaction. "We can talk about positions later," she said, suddenly emboldened, "but I thought we should figure if we can work this whole thing out, first."

Ronan blinked once, and then again after a long stare at Nita. "You're saying..." he began, although a smile began to grow on his face. "Uh. You're saying that you want to try having him date both of us?"

"If he's up for it, too, yeah," Nita explained, grinning. Her confidence in the idea was blossoming as she heard someone else say it out loud. "Or, hey, maybe even just the three of us dating. I'd be lying, Ronan, if I said I wasn't attracted to you, at least a little."

"Isn't that a bit... unorthodox?" Ronan asked. Nita had barely managed to level an, 'are you kidding me?' stare at him before he made a face at himself and continued, "Who am I kidding? Unorthodox is practically our reason for being. Do you want to call him over, or shall I?"

"I will. He's more likely to listen to me, I think." Nita poked her thoughts towards the part of her brain where she could usually feel Kit. _Hey, you busy with anything?_

It took a moment for Kit to reply, and when he did, he sounded distracted. _Uh, hey, sorry. No, I'm not doing anything. I just got in, dinner's not going to be for a while. What's up?_

_Can you meet me at Ronan's?_

_Uh, sure, but-- why?_

Nita rolled her eyes. _I can't think of anything that would require the three of us to talk, can you?_

Kit was silent for a few seconds, long enough for Nita to wonder if he'd decided to ignore her, before he replied, _I'll be there in five._

"He's on his way," Nita told Ronan. "Five minutes."

Ronan nodded slowly, his face a study in disbelief. "You know, two months ago I hadn't even realised I'm into guys?" 

"Really? Kit and I have known for ages."

"That- But-" Ronan glared at Nita, although he didn't quite manage to smother the laugh that followed. "You could have made yourselves useful and told me! Would have saved me a lot of confusion." The glare turned to grin as he nodded at Nita's Coke. "Another?"

Nita considered the almost empty can before downing the last mouthful. "Sure, why not?"

By the time Kit was knocking on the back door, Nita and Ronan had already finished another can each and were making fair headway on a bag of crisps. "... This is a little unnerving," he said, taking in the sight of them hanging out casually. "Uh. Hi, guys. What's up?"

"We both like you, Kit," Ronan pointed out; Nita thought she might have eased into it a little more gently, but she couldn't deny Ronan's way worked. "You like both of us. We... kinda like each other. At the very least, we're friends, and we did kiss that one time."

"Thank you for summarising exactly why this situation is so complicated," Kit retorted. "Is that all? Can I go back to angsting over this whole thing? Or is there something else?"

Nita grinned. "What if we could make it a lot less complicated?" she asked.

"I'm all ears."

Nita and Ronan shared a grin before looking back at Kit. "It's simple," Nita explained. "You date both of us. And we... figure out if we want to date, too." The more she thought about it, the more it seemed like something Nita wanted to try. Every time she thought about it, her stomach went all fluttery, and then she couldn't stop picturing hands. In places. Where she would very much like there to be hands. If the glances Ronan kept shooting at her were any indication, she was pretty sure he was feeling the same way; his gaze on her skin felt like the very touches she was already imagining. 

Kit stared, shock naked on his face. "Are you two _serious_?"

When he didn't say anything else, Nita started to wonder if she'd misjudged the whole situation. A look at Ronan showed him to be getting visibly nervous as well. "Uh- Well, I mean, if you do-"

"Yes! Yes, thank you, Powers, yes, let's do that, please, yes." Before she could think, Nita had an armful of Kit, and then it was gone before she could process, Kit already moved on to throwing his arms around Ronan. "You guys are really up for this?"

Ronan nodded. "I am," he assured Kit, giving him a tight squeeze before letting go. Kit alternated between grinning at him, and at Nita. "And it was Nita's idea, so... Movie, States-side, Saturday night? The three of us?"

"Works for me." Nita agreed, as Kit nodded enthusiastically. She could feel the tension she'd been carrying for the past week drop away. "Ronan, you seen Star Trek yet?"


End file.
